1. Isn’t it a shame that CBS Daytime (The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful) is going retro just for ratings? Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) and NeIl (Kristoff St. John) running over pregnant Christine (Lauralee Bell) on Y&R? She sadly had a miscarriage. Running over a soap character is so ancient and revolting!

2. Victor (Eric Braeden) revealed as a Catholic in oh so dated confession scenes! Religion again on daytime soaps! What about the Jews? Remember Jewish character Nora Hannon Buchanan on One Life to Live, played by the mighty Emmy winner Hillary B. Smith? Miss her!

3. Wasn’t the highlight of the whole week when Ryan’s Hope character Delia Reid Ryan (Ilene Kristen) now revived on General Hospital sang “Danny Boy” service to baby Avery at Ava’s (Maura West) memorial? This is just before Ava revealed herself to her mother as still being alive. “Danny Boy” is of course what Maeve Ryan (the great Helen Gallagher) used to sing to beleaguered characters. It was the trademark of the show. And here’s a hug for Claire Labine who, along with the late Paul Avila Mayer, was the co-creators/headwriter of RH. Irish forever! Did you know the Ryans were modeled on Claire’s real family? She still is and always will be a daytime legend.

4. Isn’t it incredible (and truly careless head writing by Ron Carlivati) to have so many General Hospital characters pardoned all within a few weeks of one another? Murderers Sonny (Maurice Benard), Jake (Billy Miller), Julian (William de Vry) who didn’t really do it, and Anna (Finola Hughes), who was pardoned off-screen. Ava is next! Yes, and even police chief Sloane (Grayson McCouch, ex As the World Turns and Another World), who really did do it and is corrupt as hell. How much more of him can we take? Anna in the FBI, gee!

Jacqueline MacInnes Wood

5. On The Bold and the Beautiful isn’t perpetually bikini-clad Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) who is staying at ex-husband Liam’s (Scott Clifton) beach house, so very sexy? You just know Steffy will lure her ex-husband Liam away from his present love Ivy (Ashleigh Brewer). Go Ivy! As I’ve written, I love Liam’s independent, truth-telling, intelligent girlfriend . She’s Marlena’s current gal. This blog is Soaps For the Thinking Fan, after all!

6. Isn’t it unbelievable that Luke (Tony Geary) bit off half of Scotty’s (Kin Shriner) ear on GH, just like Sir Anthony Hopkins’ legendary Hannibal Lechter character did in Silence of the Lambs? Or Mike Tyson? The doctors were able to repair it thankfully. For this genuine shocker, bravo Carlivati!

The vodka martini stands alone at the bar waiting to be sipped.The well-dressed older blonde woman stands next to it, looking hard at the beguiling beverage. Her face tells us she’s fighting the fight every recovering alcoholic fights countless times. She wins this round, walking away, leaving the martini untouched.

But how much longer can The Young and the Restless’Nikki Newman resist the siren song of alcohol? The classic Alcoholics Anonymous slogan “One Day at a Time” could have been written for her. A lifelong alcoholic, she is always vulnerable to drink, and falls off the wagon when the pressure is strong enough.

Lately, the pressure has been very strong — the public revelation that she mothered Dylan McAvoy as a young girl when she was a member of a cult led by Ian Ward. Although she was having an affair with Ian, her baby turned out to be fathered by her friend Paul Williams.Ian even sued Nikki for emotional distress for passing off Dylan as his son.Although the case was dismissed, the trauma sent Nikki to an AA meeting, where she told her story to sympathetic ears. Ian swore that getting Nikki back on the sauce would be his revenge.

As portrayed with tenderness and torment by Melody Thomas Scott, Nikki’s great vulnerability to the temptation to drink under pressure has made her a very popular character over the last 30 years. Will Nikki’s inner strength be great enough to carry her over the hurdles of temptation that keep on coming?

It’s an ongoing question that will get a powerful challenge in the upcoming fall season. A new cast member will be joining Y&R. She is primetime star Meredith Baxter, who will play Nikki’s “drinking buddy” Maureen for a few months. Is Maureen also the mother of Kelly and Stich? Can Nikki survive a major dose of this alcohol-soaked “friendship”?

General Hospital’s Chemistry Tests

You never know when two actors are going to hit it off.General Hospital has been experimenting with several interesting pairs lately.

Lisa LoCicero and Wally Kurth are being paired as Olivia and Ned to quite the charming effect.Recently after some drinks they watched TV in a hotel room, where Ned had to warn Olivia against a very bad joke — drunk-dialing an animal shelter to inquire about an adoption. Happily, when she sobered up she was mortified that she’d done something stupid.

Another attention-getting couple is Michelle Stafford and Roger Howarth, who have been given a few funny and charming scenes lately in which the unlikely couple Nina Clay and Franco build a friendship.Both Stafford and Howarth are noted for playing bad characters and their pairing is an interesting face off.Of course Franco’s girlfriend Carly doesn’t like it.

Most enjoyable, too, are Maura West as Ava and Tony Geary as Luke, seen skyping Carly’s bid for the job of evil drug-dealing Luke’s underboss. What a treat it is to watch two soap superstars at work and play. Or perhaps I should say, work they make look like play!

Soap stories, most of which are about romance and love triangles, do tend to get repetitive.Adding variety and spice to this formula are character roles, which do a lot to make soaps more interesting.These characters often provide comic relief and serve as “talk tos” for the main characters.

Colorful and amusing character parts have enriched soaps since the beginning.

On Another World in the 70s, Anne Meacham as Iris’s assistant Louise Goddard always drew laughs when she talked to plants about the show’s tangled plots, “confiding” in the greenery in a deep, soothing voice. In the 80s, Brent Collins on AW was memorable as Felicia Gallant’s wise-cracking sidekick. (A versatile actor, he also played the evil, unfunny Mr. Big on As the World Turns.)At the same time on Days of Our Lives,Arleen Sorkin and John DeLancie served as comic foils to leads Marlena and Roman – Arleen as the ditzy blond Calliope and John as the stuffed shirt Eugene.Meanwhile, on All My Children, the country-fried Opal (Dorothy Lyman, Jill Larson) was the talk-to for Erica, and was so popular she became a main character.

Now more than ever, today’s meager menu of four soaps needs to be made tastier by the addition of the adroit services of stellar character actors:

All the goings-on at The Bold and the Beautiful’s Forrester Creations are comically commented on by Pam (Ally Mills) and her boyfriend Charlie (Dick Christie), turning the office staff into an irreverent Greek chorus. Often they “get” what’s happening before the main characters do. Pam, you may recall, was first to catch on to how crazy Quinn is.

A fine example of comic acting was on display just this month as Ilene Kristen guested on General Hospitalas her oldRyan’s Hope character Delia Reid Ryan, her patented kookiness undiminished by the passing years,Delia, in a real stroke of writing brilliance, was revealed to be the mother ofAva (Maura West).Like mother like daughter — both are connivingand mocking. This time Delia came to stay with pregnant Ava and her baby daddy Sonny and wound up busting into Sonny’s safe before she was escorted out of town by Sean.

Another comic character that is much beloved by the GH audience is Alice Gunderson (Bergen Williams), the truth-telling wrestler and former Quartermaine maid who is now a real thorn in the side of Tracy.Alice is on to the fact that Tracy is trying to secretly take over ELQ, the family business.Recently Alice proved she really does have a heart by having a heart attack, and now needs a heart transplant to save her life.

Speaking of thorns, a shining example of tour de force character acting is now being offered by Ray Wise, whose seductive con man Ian Ward is now a thorn in the sides of many Genoa City residents on The Young and the Restless. Right now, he’s suing Nikki for emotional disturbance (!) because she lied and told him he was Dylan’s biological father. In this storyline, Wise has been particularly well paired with Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki) and Eric Braeden, who plays Nikki’s exasperated and combativehusband Victor.

One of the great things about daytime soap opera is how strong the women characters generally are. They have to be that way to survive the problems continually thrown at them in their everyday lives. At the same time, they must be vulnerable to the vagaries of romance. The head may know best, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

One of daytime’s strongest women characters is also one of its historically most vulnerable. She is Nikki Newman, as played with such phenomenal depth and power for the last thirty years by Melody Thomas Scott on The Young and the Restless. For the last six months Nikki has been fighting a situation that has shaken her to her very core: She found out the baby she gave up to adoption as a young teenager is in fact the new man in town, Dylan McAvoy (Steve Burton). How, she wonders, can she earn his filial devotion?

The baby was conceived under very shady circumstances. As a young girl, Nikki joined a cult led by a very influential, shifty and pushy man named Ian Ward. Ward seduced the young girl and Nikki carried the baby to term, giving it up for good with the assistance of some local nuns.

One of the first things Nikki did after she revealed herself to the grown Dylan as his mother was to make sure that he knew that Ian, the rat, is his biological father. Dylan researched Ian and found out he was still up to his old tricks, living as a shady youth counselor named John Darwin. Darwin came to Genoa City and has since haunted the lives both of Nikki and Dylan.

Ian’s unwanted attention has been particularly frightful for Nikki, especially when he breaks the security of the Newman estate and shows up in Nikki’s living room. But what’s really tested Nikki is Ian’s plot to similarly influence and seduce her young granddaughter Summer, who is the daughter of Nikki’s other son Nick Newman.

As played so beautifully by Scott, Nikki is able to be strong despite her fear. Even though she was frightened, she stood up to Ian, telling him she is not afraid of him. He requested a $5 million payoff to leave town, and Nikki showed up with a fraction of the amount. Then she scared him away from Summer, demonstrating her great strength as a character and a leading lady.

One of the great highlights of this plot has been the performance of Ray Wise, a soap opera veteran and perhaps best known for the role of Leland Palmer on Twin Peaks. His Ian Ward is just the right shades of charming and smarmy and has had wonderful scenes with both Scott and Hunter King, who plays Summer.

Now that Ward has been exposed as a scoundrel, will he turn up dead? And will it be Nikki — or someone else — who kills him?

The Young and the Restless may be the best soap when it comes to dragging out its storylines. Because this week, it was more than worth than nine month wait when it was explosively revealed to Dylan MacAvoy that Chelsea’s newborn baby Connor isn’t really his, but the child of Chelsea’s ex-husband Adam Newman. As you know, baby Connor is experiencing signs of retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease Adam himself inherited from his blind mother.

Steve Burton’s Dylan: The baby he loves so much isn’t really his

In addition to the suspense, what made the storyline high point worth waiting for was the performances. As Chelsea the lifelong con woman, Melissa Claire Egan always sustains a nice element of hysteria, and that worked well in the revelation scenes. But it was Steve Burton as Dylan who stole the show with Dylan’s tearful and very sensitive reaction to the news, as his character loves what he believed to be his baby very much. Dylan had even married Chelsea and made a whole new life with her believing he had fathered Connor. He even bought Genoa City’s coffee house Crimson Lights to support the family.

As evidenced here, Burton has improved greatly as an actor since the days when he played Jason Quartermaine Morgan on General Hospital. As Dylan, he has found layers in his character, who has always been a guy almost too good to be true since his introduction last year. Now Burton has many opportunities to add more shades of gray to Dylan, a hero in the war in Afghanistan. This will be challenging if the spoilers are correct – they say he’ll go against character type by kidnapping baby Connor from his mother.

Of course, Michael Muhney who plays Adam was great as always in the scenes in which Adam found out that baby Connor is his son. Now in what will become a continuing storyline situation, he has threatened to take Connor away from the baby’s mother. Muhney is so terrific at being mean, this is a storyline worth looking forward to.

And what do you think of the spoilers/rumors that Dylan is really the long lost son Nikki gave birth to as a teen and gave away? The ages here don’t really match up — Steven Burton is too old to be Melody Thomas Scott’s son. But as Dylan has no relatives as is in Genoa City, this would tie him into the main Newman family, making him Nick and Victoria’s brother and Victor’s stepson.

What didn’t work for me was having Avery, Dylan’s ex, be late to her own cancelled wedding to Nick so she could listen to Dylan’s anguish at finding out the baby isn’t his. What real life bride would be late to her own wedding? As we’ve said in the past, Avery is also too good to be true, and this time she was tripped up by her own good nature. Will Avery and Dylan wind up getting back together? Will Avery ever marry Nick? The baby reveal certainly has launched many good future storylines for Y&R.

General Hospital: Wasn’t the death of Edward Quartermaine nicely handled? As visiting grandson Ned said in a toast: “There will never be another Edward Quartermaine.” This was also a tribute to the late John Ingle, the great actor who long played the role (originated by David Lewis.) Perhaps the saddest scene soap history-wise was the agonized exclamation of Tracy at the family crypt: “There was always the four of us, including Edward, Lila, and Alan, and now there’s only me.” All in all., a fond farewell to daytime’s most feisty family, iconic because they were perhaps just a bit like yours and definitely just like mine: endearing but dysfunctional and fighting all the time.

The late, great John Ingle

GH, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless: As if to soften the blow, SoapNet gave us five rerun episodes of the Quartermaines on the family’s traditional pizza-eating holiday, Thanksgiving, known to them as “Quartermainia.”’ Also giving us old episodes the day after Thanksgiving was Days of Our Lives (Susan’s Elvis themed wedding) and The Young and the Restless (Nikki and Victor’s second wedding.)

Don’t you just love watching soap reruns? Most of all, there’s the joy of seeing “friends,” characters you spent years with, some long forgotten and now delightfully rediscovered. I’m an especially soft touch for characters who had heart, like GH’s Laura and Tony Jones. But last week Marlena really enjoyed seeing her historic favorites, the humorous supporting characters like Reginald the footman on GH (whatever happened to him?), Alice the wrestler/maid and Foster and Annabelle, the Q dogs. They added spice to the famous Quartermaine family’s comic brew.

Perhaps the most fun of watching reruns is to see characters and actors in their younger form. Weren’t younger Vanessa Marcil and Ingo Rademacher just gorgeous [Read more…]

The Young and the Restless: So, what did you think of Y&R’s 10,000th episode, aired Thursday? This was the one in which a “dead” character came back for his own funeral. In this case, it was Victor Newman, in what seemed to be his 438th resurrection. (It was actually his third). Well, in the episode’s defense, it did feature the entire cast, including characters like Esther, Traci and Danny, albeit in overcrowded group scenes. The relief at seeing Victor alive (in a $10,000 suit, after months of grimy togs) along with such Newman family characters as Victor’s daughter Abby was kind of sweet. And Victor and Nikki had an episode-ending reunion love scene, a rarity in the history of soaps: a scene where a couple actually ends up happy.

Victor and Nikki, together againEric Braeden and Melody Thomas Scott

This celebratory episode was a treat for viewers who have never seen a soap before, but longtimers who had seen it all before were probably left feeling blasé. For some, it may even have bordered on soap self-parody, as was accurately predicted by former Marlena contributor Patrick Erwin in a letter last week. The over-arching problem with the episode was that it was pedestrian soap opera. And a Y&R special shouldn’t be that un-special after 10,000 episodes! The episode was also emblematic of the last two years or so of the inexplicably top-rated Y&R, which may be summed up with one word: blah. Both the show and the special episode were produced and co-written by the recently fired Maria Arena Bell. [Read more…]

The Young and the Restless: The hardest job in the soap world is being done right now by new executive producer Jill Farren Phelps and headwriter Josh Griffith as they revamp Y&R and are rumored to be paring down its expensive cast. Marlena has always believed it’s not a critic’s job to tell producers what to do; it’s our job to react to it. Yet, I can’t resist making some observations on the Y&R they are examining right now.

How the hell are Phelps and Griffith going to get rid of any veterans, when the greatest strength of Y&R is its plethora of actors who have been on for decades? Firing any will be an amputation, with the fans just screaming bloody murder even after just one pink slip. Look at how wrenching it was to lose Eileen Davidson as Ashley, who departed Y&R just last week for Days of Our Lives! Almost all the older vets have proven their worth by improving the awful stories of Ms. Arena Bell and company though their great acting abilities. Examples:

Peter Bergman

Michelle Stafford

Peter Bergman’s Jack conquering paralysis and his joke of a marriage to Melody Thomas Scott’s Nikki; Michelle Stafford in the on-going travails of Phyllis; Doug Davidson, bravura as Paul in the father kills son Ricky story, and on and on. For whom will the bell toll?

Caution: cutting or deemphasizing the vets on Y&R would likely kill the show, as it will cause longtime viewers — its core audience — to flee. Plus, any of these actors can be maintained or saved by improved writing for their characters.

Doug Davidson

Most likely cuts will come from the shorter-termed vets from other shows, like the Genie Francis (totally miscast as scheming Genevieve) and those who have run out of story, like Stephen Nichols (Tucker). Please don’t cut Debbi Morgan (Harmony) and Darnell Williams (Sarge)! Each has more than carried over their momentous acting skills from All My Children to Y&R and I’ll cry if they get the sack.

The most effective move would be to punch up or recast most of the young cast, who range from nothing more than ordinary to dreadful. I have never been a fan of (recent Emmy winner!) Christel Khalil (Lily) and Daniel Goddard (Cane). Lily and Cane are insipid and I don’t care to see any more about Cane’s past. The relative newbies such as Blake Hood (who plays the newly adult Kyle) and Jessica Heap (who plays Eden) don’t do much for me. I have a feeling the show will be bringing in [Read more…]

The Young and the Restless: Like gossip on old movies and TV and the soap opera world? Like to laugh? Wanna get all the inside whispered into your ear by a great soap opera icon? Then get yourself a copy of Not Young, Still Restless (HarperCollins) the very frank and entertaining autobiography of 83-year-old Jeanne Cooper, who has starred as Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless since 1973.

Cooper, who was brought up in a modest household in Taft, California, fell in love with theater and became a Hollywood contract player (and later television freelancer) during the 50s, all before she came to Y&R. She appeared in such movies as The Girl From Wyoming with Maureen O’ Hara (who initially tried to push younger actress Cooper into the background) and Let No Man Be My Epitaph (where she became friends with Shelley Winters.) For more than two decades she was a most prolific guest star on primetime shows (from Wagon Train and Perry Mason to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Bracken’s World) getting to really know such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Raymond Burr and her dear longtime friend, Barbara Hale.

And right off the bat, Cooper tells you who she slept with in those glory days — David Janssen and Robert Taylor (!) were just two. Very quickly you see that the strong woman who survived and thrived in the difficult word of Hollywood had tremendous vulnerabilities, revealed through her running painful description of her love/ hate relationship with her husband, agent and producer Harry Bernsen. He was a handsome, cheating money moocher, and she eventually divorced him. But their three children (actor Corbin, Collin and Caren) became and remain the lights of her life. What a proud, deeply loving mother she appears to be! (She now has eight grandchildren in a tight knit family.)

Cooper confesses that The Young and the Restless saved her life. After her bout with alcoholism, Bill Bell personally sent her to rehab. Cooper delightfully details all the leading names of the actors and backstagers she’s known through [Read more…]